


The Smoke Unfurled

by ivyspinners



Category: X -エックス- | X/1999
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, M/M, Pining, Possessive Behavior, The Author Regrets Nothing, but with more pining and less biology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:00:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24327691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyspinners/pseuds/ivyspinners
Summary: They weren't claim-marks, but they marked and claimed all the same.Subaru spends his heats alone. The alternative—not the alternative he wants, but the one he can actually have—is worse.
Relationships: Sakurazuka Seishirou/Sumeragi Subaru
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	The Smoke Unfurled

**Author's Note:**

> So I was reading some fic and wondering _how can Subaru suffer some more_ , and realized that a certain trope already had creepy obsessiveness, dubcon, marks-as-claims, and _yearning_ tied into it.
> 
> Basically: it amuses me to imagine Seishirou killing all of Subaru's few partners (ie friends) so that he has to spend his heat/rut suffering a l o n e while being reminded of Seishirou's claim mark. And then someone else suggested he could get discovered by another Dragon, and...

They weren't claim-marks, but they marked and claimed all the same. Each time heat seared his body, they _burned_.

The room was hot and dark, the world outside silent. Subaru slammed his face in clean, white pillows to smother his gasp. Soapy lemon washed over him like a wave, a pleasant scent now unbearably acrid. The coarse linen scratched across over-sensitive skin like sandpaper—too much, too foreign. All he had. The few possessions with his own scent wouldn't survive all that came with his heat, and it was a distant second to what he wanted. But at least he had something of it.

Maybe cigarettes, he thought hazily, but when he tumbled over and groped for a pack, the pentagrams atop his hands glowed. They hadn't stopped burning. The sight of them—and he couldn't move, couldn't stop the whine escaping his throat, choking, gasping, _hurting_.

In the first year after, _after_ , Subaru had tried to hide them when—this—happened, and he'd buried his hands in soft leather, like he tried to bury his need in faces that meant nothing—the faded, hollow _nothing_ that every friendship had become in the _after_.

And like the gloves, it hadn't worked. The leather, with the familiarity of decades, became so constricting, and stifling, and hot, he had to rip them off. Just as the men and their faces were ripped away from life, their only remaining trace a single, drifting sakura petal. (And the worst part was, under the nausea and grief, part of him had been—had been—)

After the third time, he'd abandoned the gloves and the men, and lain naked and burning and untouched. Curled up in the inadequacy of his scent alone, _wanting_ , whimpering, and unfulfilled, always. He didn't own anything with the scent he wanted.

Only this time, face buried in rough sheets, heat beating through his body like a pulse, throbbing where he was _empty_ , he wasn't alone.

"Subaru?" came a hesitant voice, outside the doorway. He tensed, but Kamui was kind, and did not open the door.

Subaru wrestled against the dizziness. He licked his lips; dry, cracked. His voice was a croak. "Kamui? What are you doing here?"

"I—heard you," was the answer, just as hesitant as before. "I can stay out here. As a friend. Or."

The wards placed outside Subaru's room didn't block scent. And as Kamui stood there, Subaru, senses heightened until every sensation cut, could catch his scent. Sympathy, guilt, _fear_. But softer. And it felt warm and comforting, like hot tea and a warm bed on stormy nights, like arms around him when he was mired in guilt, like conversations about life atop Tokyo Tower, like the touch of a healer treating an injured pet, like he mattered to those that mattered to him—safe. Kamui could handle himself against most.

It was an illusion. _Most_ , not all. There had never been safety.

"Thank you, Kamui," he murmured, swallowed, almost capturing that illusory calm. "I'm okay." He pulled a cigarette from his pack, lit it, and tried not to gasp from the scent, billowing out. The heat and smoke stroked his mouth, the craving almost fulfilled.

There was a very long pause from the door, and Subaru inhaled, struggling to keep his thoughts in the here and now. In the light tracing the back of his hand, the smoke unfurled like—like ofuda fluttering, like petals, cast aside and drifting. His hand circled his naval, fingers splayed over overheated skin.

"Those things are bad for you," Kamui muttered, and Subaru jumped at the reminder he was there. The smoke; it had reached Kamui, laying Subaru's thoughts clear. But Kamui, though he sighed—guilt clogged Subaru's throat, _sorry_ rattling behind his teeth—just left.

It was just him and the need pulsing beneath his long-healed ribs, making him soft and taut and desperate.

Subaru broke out in cold sweat, and _want want want_ made his toes curl, made him want to writhe. _Did_ make him writhe. There was nothing familiar on his skin, except the back of his hands burning. Even that was without promise of _closeness_ like he wanted, of meters apart, breaths apart, skin on skin and nothing. No hands stopping his breath, no marks on his neck, no fingers on his temple scraping like nails through everything he was. No fingers bruising his thighs, nothing filling the emptiness in him. The cigarette smoke was everywhere, mixing with sour distress; he left it on a glass tray by his bedside to slowly burn down, a dull cherry glow in the dark, fading. If ash fell on the back of his hands, he did not notice.

He touched himself, with little gasps that sounded pathetic even to him, and it built and spiralled, but the drag of his fingers, caressing, gave him no relief and—and—Subaru knew he shouldn't, but shame had already been a constant companion since he was seventeen.

He inhaled the choking smoke, bruised his fingers around an old arm fracture, dug his elbows hard into his ribs, whimpering, and that was—under his eyelids, burning gold stared back, watched him, saw him— _pleasure_.

Not enough. ( _Empty, please please please—_ ) But something.

Temporary relief, as the pentagrams seared and hurt and glowed.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is never expected, but always appreciated :D


End file.
